That’s what we’re seeing now. And you started to see from the commitment of Traders report last Friday, which was through last Tuesday, you started to see the banks covering fairly large chunks of their gross short and the hedge funds dumping fairly large chunks of their gross long. Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics, where today we’re going to be digging in what you can expect perhaps after now that the election is complete. Pat, a lot of this year focusing on the election and the impact in the gold and silver markets as well as a lot of other things that have happened.

But to give some idea of what might be coming next and a whole lot more, Dave Kransler of Investment Research Dynamics joining me again on the show. David, it’s nice to see you. Last week talking some for tuna mining and today we’ll get into more gold and silver. But how are you today, sir? Doing well. How are you, Chris? Thanks for having me on again. Well, I’m doing well also. And I will mention that we are recording on Monday. This will be aired on Tuesday. So at least for context we can have that Monday date in mind where a little bit of a dip in the gold market.

We’re down $73, Dave. This is in territory of one of the bigger moves in either direction that we’ve seen in gold, silver also down 2.76%, $0.87 right now we saw something similar to this the day after Trump was elected. Saw something similar to that back in 2016, day after Trump was elected. But obviously with a lot of the activity this year centered around the election, now that it has come and gone, would love to get some insight into what you’re seeing and thinking right now. I mean, if you, if you look at more than 50% of the decline in price since the election has occurred when the COMEX opens, after the COMEX opens in the morning.

I mean there’s most of the, most of the overnights. Last week the price of gold went sideways when the Eastern Hemisphere physical markets were open and trading and then Asia would close and a little bit, you know, typically going into the London AM fix, the price would get pushed down. And then, and then when the comex opens at 8:20 New York time, that’s when you start to see the waterfall declines. So and I’ve said, I’ve said, I’ve been saying all along for in fact, I even put it in my newsletter, I think two issues ago. I said, look, I’m expecting a pullback here.

In fact, I think I may have posted the commentary on my blog or on my substack, I said look, the market got too frothy. All the technical indicators, I look at the RSI and the macd like most people do, those became very overbought. And the long short structure of the commitment of traders report became out of whack with the hedge funds extremely net long, their gross longs, net their gross shorts and the COMEX banks extremely net short. And so I mean I started calling this commitment of traders open interest liquidation operation where the banks short into a big run up and then when the technical conditions are there and the right news flow is coming out, boom, they pull the rug out from under the market.

They know where. So the banks run the comex, right? The COMEX banks, they run the systems, they know where the hedge funds have their stop losses set. So they know where they have to target in order to trigger hedge fund selling. And it’s all electronic, it’s all computer driven. And so that’s what we’re seeing now. You started to see from the commitment of traders report last Friday, which was through last Tuesday, you started to see the banks covering fairly large chunks of their gross short and the hedge funds dumping fairly large chunks of their gross longs.

In fact, I mean the amount of contracts that the hedge funds sold almost perfectly matched the amount of contracts that the banks covered on their short side. So I don’t know if you have that graphic candy, but it’s, I mean it’s, you know, it’s looking for it in the back. We’ve just, we’ve seen the same pattern repeated ad nauseam for, well, for as long as I’ve been paying attention to it in the early 2000s. Yes, and there we go, I have it and pulling it up now, I guess that was the other question I was wondering, and you touched on this a little bit, that be prepared for the possibility of a pullback.

Here is the swap dealer position. You can see that like you mentioned, there was some short covering over the past couple of weeks still aside from what we saw in August, Tom, still close to record territory. I mean this is going back to 2007. So this line here showing how short the banks are and another reason I mentioned that I had someone asking me if, you know, the price has to turn around now and I would point out we’re still 600 bucks higher than since the beginning of the year and wouldn’t be surprising to see a pullback especially with the short position that I just showed there.

And I know you had another comment on that I’m, I’m sorry, did you have any further comment on that short position I know you’re talking about? No, I mean, it’s, you know, this is just, it’s got to play out. It’s, it’s got to play out. And, and I’ve had several subscribers, you know, email me last week and they’re like, are you, are you buying anything down here? What are you doing? I’m like, I know I’m sitting on. I actually took partial profits on a lot of positions about three weeks ago so that I would be able to reload them at a lower level if the market did what I think it was getting ready to do.

And now it’s doing it. So it’s just, you can’t try to time the bottom, but you can look at the typical signals that indicate that this thing may be running out of steam. This, this operation that’s being done. And part of it is I really don’t look at the commitment of traders that closely except when the market gets to extremes, either extremely overbought or extremely oversold. And at some point it will become oversold. And at that point I expect to see the banks to have considerably flattened out their net short position. I don’t expect them to go long or to, you know, to go flat paper, gold and silver.

And we’ll see the hedge funds have considerably flattened their long side so that they’re not, you know, and that’s, so that’s one of the things that I’m looking for. So that there’s also, because I’ve had a lot of subscribers email me and ask me, you know, well, was gold going to do what it did when Trump got elected in 2016, which is gold. That’s when gold went into, I think we were in about a two and a half year pullback starting in late 2016. It actually started in August 2016. And there’s some attributes that differentiate the current situation versus what the market was like back then.

If you recall, the four and a half year bear market ended at the end of 2015. And all of a sudden the whole sector took off like a rocket ship in January of 2016. And it ran up really quickly and we saw massive speculation in the juniors. Some of the juniors went up five and 10 times between January 2016 and August 2016. And I looked at that and I’m like, this is unhealthy. This is going to sell off. I didn’t expect it to sell off for two and a half years. So that was part of the equation.

This guy, John Brimlow, he used to do an in depth three time a day physical gold market update where he covers everything around the globe. And I was subscribing to it until he discontinued it. But he kept his legacy subscribers on his email list and he sends out a daily update. And the day after the election last week he reminds us, I’m just going to read this verbatim. When gold was raided after the Trump win in 2016, India also abruptly canceled all large denomination banknotes. And I remember that this paralyzed Indian buying for several weeks. No such event has occurred this time.

In fact India is, I mean even their central bank is buying a lot of gold right now. So and so back then we also didn’t have the physical gold accumulation by eastern hemisphere central banks that we have going on right now. And at some point, at some point the Indians are going to, they’ll push the price down low enough that the Indians are going to come in and just start buying hands over handover fist. And same with the Chinese. And that’s what I think will put a floor in, in this current sell off. Yeah, we’ve already seen that in the last couple months in India.

Here is on the silver side, you see how this has surged following the reduction in the import taxes and now I believe in the midst of festive season as well. Although Dave, something else that I wanted to get your opinion on here. Also worth noting that here is September 18th when the Fed held its meeting that’s called 2560, closed at 2590. We’re still up 30 bucks since then and in the meantime had quite a rally in the dollar. First of all, is it odd to you that after a 50 basis point cut, that is when the dollar would be soaring and also does that I would say given the fact that gold is still higher while you’ve had the dollar go from basically about par over 5% in what is that just under two months now, gold is still up $30.

So perhaps another way of looking at it. But what do you, what do you say there? I mean the, the rise in, in the 10 year yield is not the reason gold has been selling off the, the dollar. The dollar probably, yeah, that probably has a fair amount to do with it. But that’s also connected to the hedge funds because the hedge funds put on, some of the hedge funds have a strategy right where they’re going to put on a pair trade where they either go long gold and short the dollar or vice versa. So now, right now you see gold, the hedge Funds are disgorging gold and at the same time, the ones that put on that pear trade are probably buying the dollar.

And in terms of why the dollar is rallying like it is, I mean, I don’t know, probably because the countries that have their currency in the dollar index, right, the euro, Japan, England, Sweden and Switzerland, from an economic standpoint, they’re probably in worse shape than the US Is. So another question about the dollar. Obviously we’ve seen the, the coverage of it so far that Trump is coming in. He’s going to do tariffs, we’re gonna have a strong dollar policy. I don’t know if it’s quite as straightforward as that. You know, maybe in another time and place, then it becomes possible.

In today’s day and age, with the debt and Fed dynamics, I think you could get improvements to the US Overall economically, but I think it’s going to have to come at the price of inflation. So when you see the dollar rallying, based on the Trump election, any thoughts on whether that’s the right or incorrect way to view such a thing, that the dollar is rallying because of Trump? Yeah, I mean, it might be. I don’t know. I think, first of all, here’s the thing. One, the fundamental factors that support gold and silver going higher are stronger now than they were than they have been at any time in the last 23 years.

That includes the trade deficit. The amount of liquidity that the Fed has let flood back into the financial system, M2, has been rising since October 2023. So it’s been rising for the last year. I mean, people don’t, people talk about that reverse repo facility, but they don’t really talk about it in terms of the substance of what it is. That reverse repo facility is half. When it got up to its peak at, I think it was around 2.3 or 2.5 trillion. That was 50% of the QE that the Fed printed in 2020. And it’s let, it’s let it, the Fed has let it drain back into the system.

A lot of it’s been used to finance T bill issuance. But then eventually that money winds its way back into the financial system. So, and part of it is also the banks. And the banks, you know, the banks also pull their money out of that facility and it gives them, it gives them liquidity, it gives them reserves. So I mean, that’s basically. The Fed basically took that liquidity out of the system. And then over the last, I don’t know, something like 18 months, it’s been letting it flood back in and it could keep those funds captive.

All it has to do is nudge up the rate it pays on the overnight repos and money funds would keep their money in there. But it didn’t do that because it knew that that money was needed to finance Treasuries without driving up treasury rates even more. So and I think when that thing runs out, because the deficits aren’t, Trump’s not going to narrow the deficits, especially if he cuts taxes, does the tariffs, he hikes the tariffs, foreign countries and foreign investors are probably going to start pulling their money out of our markets. And it’s, I mean, it’s just, in my opinion, it’s going to make the economic landscape even worse.

And when, you know, you do tariffs. So let’s say he does tariffs on imported autos. Well, it’s not like the US Auto manufacturers are going to sit there and keep their prices the same. No, they’re going to hike prices. But there’s also an affordability issue. I mean, the average household now can’t really, unless they get, you know, a subprime auto loan, they can’t really afford to buy a new car. And it’ll make it even worse if Trump imposes tariffs and then the auto manufacturers jack the prices on what they’re selling here because that’s what happens when there’s tariffs.

The end user, the consumer ends up paying for it. I don’t know. I think at some point this dollar rally is going to run out of steam. But again, I don’t know that that’s what’s required in order for the current sell off in gold and silver to bottom out and move higher. Again, I think there’s just a whole host of factors that are supporting higher prices for gold and silver. And I just went over a few of them. And at some point when the reverse repo facility runs out, the Fed’s going to have to start printing money again because otherwise who’s going to buy the massive treasury issuance that’s coming? Well, Dave, that leads into my next question.

Where curious if you think that perhaps there would be an increased probability. I won’t ask you to name what that would be, but just the fact that Trump’s in there. He has Elon Musk talking about massive cost cutting, which if it’s funded with inflation, could actually be possible. You also have Judy Shelton who’s publishing her book and doing tours and interviews about having a gold backed treasury option. So obviously we don’t know what will happen, but if there’s ever been a time for a gold revaluation, you can see some of the pieces falling in place, especially because some of the things that he has expressed that he would like to do could actually work if you had something like that.

So curious if you’ve thought about that at all or have any thoughts on that. What gold would be used to back Treasuries? First of all, I mean, that’s what Bretton woods was right. Gold backed treasury issuance. It was gold that was backing Treasuries issued to foreign investors. And that’s the reason why they had to close the gold window because, because France Charles de Gaulle looked at all the Treasuries that were issued and he looked at the last formal audit of the US gold holdings, which was from Eisenhower’s administration. And he did the math. He said, no, they’re issuing more Treasuries than they have to foreigners, than they have gold to back it.

So he started converting his Treasuries into bars at the Fed window. Switzerland got wind of it and they were actually going to start doing the same thing and that’s when they closed the gold window. So I mean, what Judy Shelton is proposing isn’t new. But I don’t. First of all, the US has to demonstrate that it actually has gold that it can use to back Treasuries. And second of all, that won’t happen because that’s not how our system is based on fractional reserve banking. And when you introduce gold into the equation, it blows that system up and we’ll have, you know, we’re going to collapse either, you know, sooner or later.

So if you just let the government keep deficit spending issuing more debt, it’ll kick the can down the road. Well, I’m wondering if we’re not. Elon Musk is going to get in there and cut costs is silly. That’s not going to happen. And if they do manage to pull off massive cost cuts, it’s going to torpedo the economy because it’s government spending right now is the only, is the only leg that, in the GDP in the, in the, in the GDP equation that’s, that’s preventing this economy from going into a tailspin. So go ahead, cut costs.

You just, you know, you’re just, you’re just going to be stepping on yourself if you do that. Well, I agree. And again, the reason why I wonder this is that a revaluation of sorts is the one way that you could actually really implement something like that. Without it, the cost would be inflation. But see like right now you’re past the point where you can grow your way out of the debt, but it hasn’t been real economic growth for several years. And when I say real economic growth, I’m talking about, you know, let’s, let’s use a bona fide measure of the GDP and a bona fide measure of the, of the rate of inflation that goes into the GDP deflator.

Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with any of that. I’m just saying, I mean, the way that, the only way that they can try and fix this is to inflate their way out of it. And we saw how well that worked in the Weimar period in Germany, right? Well, yes, but I’m just saying that at some point you don’t have much other option. When I think there will be some realization, you could argue whether it’s now or not, that the road is coming to an end. So there’s something you have to do. And either case we’ll see over the next four years.

Just interesting when you think about some of the things they’ve talked about, some of the people that are involved and that right now, if you did it, I think you would run into some serious. I mean, you’re going to run into some issues either way. But to maintain the banking and treasury markets anyway, we’re past that point of no return. I know you’re familiar with von Mises. We’re, we’re way past that. I mean, it’s. Right. And the remaining option at some point. How is the debt resolved? One of the methods they have is a revaluation of gold.

So I’m not saying gold. Okay, well, speaking of gold, we’ll, we’ll switch over to one other thing I wanted to. Don’t tell me you think that, that 8,100 tons is really there and unencumbered. I, I assumed you were, you were watching over it. It’s under Dave’s house. Although Dave another. Another country that plays a central role in the gold market. We had the headline sent China Central Bank Pauses Gold Purchases for the fourth month in August. We also do have an article from Jan Newen House. This came out a couple of months ago. Although he tracks through some of the data and comes to the conclusion that if you look at other sources that they have not paused their gold membership or their gold accumulation rather.

And he notes how in some of the past times where they announced, oh, we added this much gold, you could clearly see them buying beforehand. But I was wondering if you could share any thoughts on what you think China may be doing. And secondly, I know this is something you and I have discussed, that it’s not a very transparent system, but at least any things that are sources where people would want to look, whether deliveries on Shanghai Gold Exchange, at least what clues there are available for people who want to do some research and get a better understanding of what may be going on.

I think Jan actually just recently updated that article. I didn’t, I read the first one and it’s actually, it’s very good. It’s worth reading because it completely lays out, I mean, anyone who’s been involved in this sector, you know, for 20 years or whatever and has been following this stuff whenever, whenever we see the headlines, oh, China pauses Gold buying in May, you know, we’re just like, okay, whatever you say. And we know it’s not true. I mean, China’s. If you. Alistair McLeod, and I can’t remember when he published this, it’s. It was probably at least 10 years ago, probably longer.

He, he put out a great research piece where he traces back. China’s been hiding its, its accumulation of gold since like at least the, the early 80s. And he, I think he traces it back to at least that far. And with the numbers and the people that he talked to over there with the numbers he put together at the time, he was estimating they had somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 tons. Now, you can’t track that by looking at Shanghai Gold Exchange withdrawals. The reason for that is. Well, first of all, the PBOC runs the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

But second of all, the PBOC is the only entity in China that does not have to source gold that goes through the Shanghai Gold Exchange. So they, you know, they can, they can buy it from whatever source, import it from wherever, and it, and they don’t have to report it if they don’t want to. I mean, if you look and I’ve got the article saved, I’m pretty sure I’ve shared it on your podcast before. But in, I believe it was 2014, there was an article in the, in the. Whatever it’s called the Morning. The morning Chinese official newspaper, and it announced that that China had opened up the port of Beijing for gold imports.

And the byline on the article specifically says part of the reason and they’re not going to report the numbers. So the numbers that go into China through Hong Kong get reported by Hong Kong, and that’s why we get to see those numbers. But the gold that flows in through Beijing, and I also believe Shanghai doesn’t get reported. And so we have no idea what the PBOC is doing in terms of importing gold through Beijing and Shanghai and using that as their accumulation and then telling the world they weren’t buying anything. I mean, if you’re a big massive buyer of gold, you want to play close to the vest if you’re a smart trader, right, because you don’t want everyone else front running you and driving the price even higher.

I mean, the gold Suppression scheme is giving them a gift because they’re being able to, they’ve been able to accumulate gold for all these years at a price that was probably below where it would have been if the COMEX didn’t exist or if there was a requirement that COMEX contracts issued could only be a certain small percentage in excess of the amount of gold that backs those contracts. And it’s that way with every other commodity, just not gold and silver. So China, I mean, yeah, of course if they’re trying to buy a lot of gold at any point in time, of course they’re going to tell the market they’re not buying gold and they’re going to publish central bank gold holdings that are flat versus the previous month.

And then Bloomberg reports, oh, China’s paused its gold buying again. And all the idiots out there who have no clue what’s going on, they’re like, oh, the price is going to go down because China stopped buying. I guarantee you they didn’t stop buying. All right, well, appreciate you shedding some light on that one. Well, and yeah, I mean people should read Jan’s article because he lay, you know, he lays out the case for, you know, with, with hard numbers and that is in the description field below. Dave, do you remember your pointing strategy, how you used to do it back in the day? There you go.

So there, that’s where you can find the link to that article. Last one before you wrap up here, obviously coming out of the BRICS meeting, we heard the plans for Russia launching a precious metals exchange. Any thoughts on that impact it might have or what you think could come from that? Well, I mean, they basically didn’t. They basically say, we’re going to start our own gold exchange to take, to take price setting away from the West. They did. Well, there you go. I mean they know, they. So I forget which Russian official but so back in like, I don’t know, 2002, 2003 or whatever, somewhere in there, one of the Russian officials showed up at a GATA meeting, you know, the GATA conference.

And you’ve seen that famous picture with him holding a gold bar. Right. I have. Well, they know what’s going on in the gold market on the COMEX and the lbma. So does China. I mean, they know, they let it continue because it’s a source of cheap gold for them. Right. So it sounds to me like Russia’s gotten to the point where, well, maybe that’s what is part of the gold revaluation strategy is to start exchanges around the world that take away pricing power from the West. And I think we’ve already seen that because the way the price of gold ran up in the summer from all the physical buying on the Eastern hemisphere, they weren’t able to slow it down on the Comets until now.

You’ve got a lot of people might not be aware of this, but Dubai is a major gold trading hub now. Singapore is becoming a major gold trading hub, gold capital of the world as they call it. These are physical markets. These are physical markets. It’s not like the Shanghai Gold Exchange trades gold futures and Russia’s like, hey, we’re going to start another exchange and that’s between Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong is basically physical market. Singapore, Russia, that’s going to take pricing power away from the derivative exchanges in London and New York. Yeah. And Dave, when you said that famous picture of guy holding the gold bar, were you referring to this one? Man, I’ll never forget that.

That was awesome. And do we know what happened to that gold bar? Is that accounted for? Is there like million dollar plugs? Stuck it in my suitcase and flew home with it. Well, no, I’m sure sure got shipped off to a refiner in, in West Africa. And you know, the, the kilo bars that were, that were refined, it was refined into are resting either as jewelry on, on Indian bride’s necks or sitting, sitting in the vaults of Indian citizens. That would be my guess because West Africa actually exports a fair amount of gold to India. Well, I hear you.

Obviously with the holidays coming up right around the corner. Great, great. Christmas or Hanukkah or for any other purposes, gift in terms of some gold. Right. Is that your sweetheart? What’s that? Is that what you’re going to be getting your sweethearts and silver pandas and baby, look how great these are. Hey, what’s mine is hers anyway, so when I croak, she’ll get it all. Well, and Dave, I’ll break a quick scoop before we wrap up. So far we are on track that later this week we are going to be making Silver Chopper Ben available with delivery in time for Christmas.

So imagine he could fly under your tree or other holiday ornaments. And stay tuned. We’ll have more information. We we finally got him ready so good news on that. Although we’ll leave Ben up here or or for you. I know this helps inspire and motivate you when you’re thinking about finance. And Dave, in closing up while we have Janet on the screen can in case she wants to know what’s going to happen in the gold and silver markets or some stocks that might be coming under pressure, what would she find at investment research dynamics.com well now that you mention it, my my next new issue comes out Thursday.

So you’ll have it in your in your email inbox probably around 4:10 Eastern Time. Is Janet already a subscriber? Right. So she’s smart though. And I actually I talk about in the opening salvo I addressed what happens with gold under Trump given what happened in 2016 issue. And I’ll probably put in commentary about just general my expectations for what it’s going to take and how long for this current pullback to subside. And then I actually am when we get done with this call, I’ve got a couple stocks, one of them I currently own Cover and Recommend and it’s been, it’s gotten pretty, pretty beaten up and I’m I need to take a look at its latest earnings and I’ll update that in my newsletter and make a recommendation.

I think it’s dirt cheap here and I’ve you know just the standard updating the portfolio stocks that I cover that have had material news in the last two weeks and I may try to put a new idea in there. There’s, there’s, I’m trying to to diversify a little more into mid cap producers not just you know, the high risk junior exploration micro caps. And so there’s there’s one that I’ve, I mean I followed it for many years. I just haven’t looked at it in a while. If I have time I’m going to take a look at that and make a recommendation.

Well a hot tip coming up in in next week’s episode. So I like that I don’t know it’ll be a hot tip or not but well fortunately people can find that at investment research dynamics.com which is also in the description field below. Dave, would you like to point again to where they can find that you used to be so oh, there you go. You still got it. Still got it. And my right hand too. I’m lefty. Is there anything the man can’t do. Although Dave, before we wrap up, I’ll mention today’s episode was sponsored by Fortuna Mining and you were there on our call last week that we did with Jorge Goza and talked about the earnings which came in at record earnings.

We even have a higher gold price than in the third quarter so far in the fourth quarter. And as I thought was interesting and we’ve talked about all year, but he said with the Lindera leach pad program that now they see costs coming down as much as 150 to 200 and all in sustaining cost while you’re going to have a higher gold price hopefully going forward. But any thoughts you had on Fortuna’s earnings and what you saw in that last quarter? Sure. So yeah, I actually dissect the numbers in depth and I do evaluation analysis in there.

Needless to say, I think Fortuna is extremely undervalued currently. But yeah, as soon as the capex from the leach pad expansion program cycles through the numbers, yeah I would expect the ASIC to drop by 150, 200 bucks an ounce. And also I think, I think the process of shutting down the San Jose mine, that should also lower the all in sustaining costs. But that’s a little bit longer term than the Lindaro leach pad. And also I believe as they continue to increase the volume throughput put at Sigela, that also not as dramatic effect as the leach pad numbers cycling through but, but that also somewhat lowers the all in sustaining costs.

So. Yeah, and Janet will be able to read about that a bit more in this week’s journal too. She probably doesn’t know how to spell gold. We’re going to get Fortuna coming up in the next journal. Your thoughts in more in depth on the recent earnings will be in this upcoming one. Yes. And just you know, on a headline basis, I mean the numbers were, were off the charts as, as I, as I described them to some people these numbers are kick ass and they are very scientific methodology. What was the ratio? It was kick ass.

So Dave, I sure appreciate that. I know Janet appreciates that as well as everyone in the audience and I appreciate you all tuning in today. So hope you enjoyed that show. Thank you to Fortuna for a great quarter and for making the show possible. And thank you Dave Cranzler of investment research dynamics.com Again in the description field below, if you don’t even feel like typing all that in, you can just go there and click it. And Dave, obviously some great stuff you have there, great stuff you shared today. And just appreciate you making some time. Pleasure to see you, as always.

And we’ll have to pick this up again soon. I guess we’ll have to get one in before the end of the year, right? Sounds good to me. Thanks again for having me on. Always a pleasure. All right, well, I appreciate that. And again, for anyone who would like to see that call that we did last week with Jorge Canoza of Fortuna, where he walked through all the details of the earnings. Well, that video is coming your way now.
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